Finite Incantatem
by Annevader
Summary: Neville overhears what he assumes is a prank that Malfoy plans to play on his friends, and decides to put a stop to it, but instead, gets caught up in a fight that has nothing to do with him but everything to do with the Dark Lord. Read and Review!
1. Misunderstanding

Hey everybody this is my first fic, so it's kind of experimental. Hope you like it.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters.

Neville Longbottom had never been particularly brave. Or so he thought. In comparison to his fellow fifth years, he considered himself downright cowardly. He wished he were brave like Harry was, or intelligent like Hermione, or even spontaneous like Ron. He observed the trio from the corner of his eyes as he absentmindedly added a pinch of powdered dragon's claw to his simmering cauldron. Ron seemed to be in the middle of a heated argument with Hermione who was lecturing him exasperatedly about something to do with the potion they were currently supposed to be brewing.

He looked away distractedly from Ron's scarlet face as his cauldron started hissing and emitting sparks. His assignment partner, Seamus Finnigan, jumped away with a yell as the cauldron twisted into a shapeless blob and the seething liquid spread out over the floor. Two seconds later, Snape, Neville's worst fear, was breathing down his neck and had him by the cuff of his neck.

"You blithering fool. Detention. And fifty points from Gryffindor. Clean this mess up."

Twenty minutes and several attempts at a cleaning spell later, a red faced Neville emerged from the Potions room followed by the raucous laughter of the Slytherins.

"Hey Longbottom, you'd make a great death eater you know, you could scare your enemies by threatening to make them sit in the same room while you brew a potion!"

Draco Malfoy and his cronies howled with laughter as he dropped his books and clamored to pick them up.

"Leave him alone, Malfoy!" Hermione interrupted.

"Or what?"

She pulled out her wand and the movement was mirrored by him and the rest of the Slytherins in the potions corridor. The Gryffindors stepped up with their wands drawn and after a few beats of intense silence, both parties pocketed their wands, declaring an unspoken truce. For the moment, anyway.

"Later"

With that rejoinder, the Slytherins filed out of the corridor followed a little later by the Gryffindors.

Neville felt miserable. Not only had he earned himself detention and lost fifty points for his house, he had also very nearly started a fight between the rival houses. And to think that was only the first period.

Two weeks later, Neville was sitting in the library perusing _One hundred and one rare magical herbs_by _Agnes Althorp_ when he was joined by Harry, Hermione, Ron and Luna.

"Hey mate, what you reading?" Ron made a face as he caught sight of the title. "I could think of one hundred and one things I'd rather be doing."

"You know, daddy found a rare herb the other day. He published it in the Quibbler too." Luna said dreamily. "It's very fascinating. If you sprinkle a little gnome's blood on it, it becomes ginormous and…"

Everybody exchanged amused glances and started up a new topic, while Luna continued her tirade, unaware that she was talking to herself.

Deprived of his privacy, Neville made an excuse and browsed through a few random shelves of books. He stopped in front of the magical creatures category. _Why I didn't die when the Augerey cried, Gadding with Ghouls, Travels with Trolls_…..

"Don't worry about it, I've sent the letter. That idiot Potter and his stupid friends will never suspect it's a trick. Man, I'd love to see their faces when they realize what we have in store for them."

Neville stopped, silent, as he listened to the familiar voice of Draco Malfoy. Neville was nobody's fool. Malfoy was upto something and Neville intended to put a stop to it.

Neville examined the facts he had at hand. Quite obviously, Malfoy was planning a prank on Harry and it seemed the first phase of his plan involved a letter. If he had already sent it then, the letter must already have arrived. His suspicions were confirmed as a second later, an owl rapped its beak on the library window for attention. Making sure nobody was looking, he opened the window and tried to swipe the letter from the owl. It screeched angrily and bit his hand.

"Ow! Stupid owl! Silencio!" The owl let out a feeble squawk before it shut up entirely and watched menacingly as Neville liberated it of the scroll tied around its leg and shut the window.

He opened the letter and read it's contents.

_Hey Harry,_

_I was wondering if you'd meet me tonight in the Trophy room at midnight. It's been so long since we've talked properly._

_Love, _

_Cho Chang._

Neville gaped, astonished. He burst into laughter as he imagined Draco sitting and writing a love letter to Harry.

So this is what he'd been talking about. Well, Neville was going to go instead of Harry to pay a nice surprise visit to Malfoy and his friends.

_Don't say I never did anything for you Harry_.

He paused long enough to pick up _Self-Defensive Spellwork _and_ Jinxes for the jinxed_ and then escaped to the relative safety of his dorm.

Ten minutes before midnight, Neville pulled on his cloak and started towards the Trophy room.

He remembered back in first year, when Harry had snuck out to that very room, another trick by Malfoy. Really, did this guy even have any imagination?

He stopped in front on the door and lit his wand tip.

It drew the light away from his face, making it indiscernible to anybody who looked directly at him.

"Potter."

"Malfoy." Neville said in a passable imitation of Harry.

"Fell for my trick then didn't you? You're even stupider than I thought. _Petrificius Totalus!"_

The spell missed Neville by an inch but his face was illuminated by it's light as it passed by.

"What the hell Longbottom? What are you doing here?" he snarled.

"I intercepted that letter you sent. Not so tough now are you?"

He screamed _Furnunculus _at the same time that Malfoy yelled _Immobulus_.

Both spells missed and the two started a full fledged duel. Just as Neville, to his amazement, felt he was gaining the upper hand, a voice behind him yelled _Stupefy_ and then everything was dark.

When Neville woke, he discovered two very unpleasant facts. One, there were silver ropes binding him and two, there was a very disgusting rag in his mouth that he imagined tasted like Severus Snape's towel. He barely managed to contain his gag reflex.

In the background he could hear the low murmur of voices and he strained his ears to listen, not daring to open his eyes.

"Not awake yet…Potter…..Dark Lord…...Stupid imbecile…..we're all in trouble now.."

"Oye." Somebody poked him harshly and he pretended to still be unconscious. Somebody had mentioned Voldemort? What the heck were they talking about? Why would a school prank involve that crazy nutter of an evil wizard?

"The stupid lump still hasn't woken up. That was one stunner you sent Goyle."

"What are we going to do with him? Erase his memory?"

"No. By now, the whole school's noticed he's missing, and if we send him back somebody like Dumbledore could always revive his memory and there'd be hell to pay for that. I say, we use him as bait. Potter has somewhat of a superwizard complex. Blaise, Nott, make sure he doesn't escape."

He heard the shuffling of footsteps and a door slamming and Neville Longbottom wondered exactly what he had gotten himself into.

So this one is really short but if it gets a good response then I'll continue it and make the chapters longer.

- Annevader-


	2. Torture

Harry paced up and down, worry gnawing at his stomach. Neville had been missing for fifteen hours or more now. He had heard him leave the dormitory a little before midnight, and in response to his queries Neville had only said that he had to finish a bit of homework and was heading to the library. Sleep-deprived as he was, Harry had not questioned the suspicious excuse but had only turned over and gone back to sleep and now he could not chastise himself enough over his foolish mistake.

"Woah calm down Harry. You look positively crazy." Harry hadn't noticed Dean enter the room.

"How can I calm down? Neville's missing and here I am doing nothing!"

"Well i wouldn't say nothing. You _are _giving the carpet a pretty good workout." Dean's jibe was quelled by the look Harry threw him.

"Look I'm worried too but there's no point hanging around here blaming yourself. Now come on, we're going to be late for Hagrid's class."

Harry sighed, depressed. Even Hagrid and the Hinkypunks had failed to cheer him up.

The will o' the wisp-like creatures floated around idly, the light surrounding them throbbing gently.

The fact that they had the lessons together with the Slytherins, did nothing to lighten his mood. He could hear Draco laughing over something even from across the forest clearing. Apparently whatever it was, was pretty hilarious. Harry had a feeling it was him.

Luna drifted over towards him and Harry's irritation peaked. He couldn't handle a harangue on the defining qualities of a Crumple Horned Snorkack right now. He didn't even know what she was doing here. Wasn't she in Ravenclaw?

"Hello Harry." She greeted solemnly. "Terrible about Neville isn't it?"

"Yes, terrible"

"Hmm. The clouds look lovely today." Luna hummed absentmindedly for a few seconds before turning back to him and saying, rather unexpectedly, "Everything happens for a reason you know Harry. And it's usually a good one."

She smiled and reverted suddenly to a discussion about the Crumple horned snorkack, but Harry found that somehow he didn't really mind it.

Neville was confused. He had absolutely no idea where he was. The last thing he remembered was drifting off to sleep in the room where he had woken up before, and now he was in a highly claustrophobic room that resembled a dungeon. The only thing in the room was a wobbly table that looked like it had seen better days. There was a metal door, and that was it. He was, surprisingly, untied.

He could dear the sounds of drunken laughter and fragments of conversation drifting down from the ceiling.

"…So I says to her, whats a pretty thing like you doing…..and then she takes her hood off, she does…..was a hag! I got the fright of me life! Scarpered outta there before she realized what was what….."

Neville guessed he was in the cellar of a bar. There was of course no way of knowing which bar it could be. The Hog's Head was too public a place and it's cellar would most definitely not have been empty. With nothing else to do, he sat back down and waited for somebody to enter the room.

At the end of the uneventful, and yet highly tense day, Harry returned to his bed with a feeling of relief at finally being able to sleep and not have to think about Neville and the piles of homework waiting to be tended to. He drifted off to sleep, falling into a dream almost at once.

_He was walking along minding his own business, when from nowhere Neville rushed towards him screaming his name. He was being chased by a giant suit of armour that transfigured itself into a bunch of tomatoes that started hurling themselves at Harry and Neville. They ran in the opposite direction when the tomatoes suddenly turned into a whirl of red hair that reminded him of Ginny Weasley…he looked back at Neville and was shocked to see him white faced and hunched over. He was kneeling next to a hooded figure that was all too familiar. Death eaters. The room was bare and the walls were brick. There was absolutely nothing interesting about the room aside from the three death eaters and Neville who looked like he'd been tortured. One of them put his hood down and Harry realized with a jolt, that it was not a death eater but Voldemort. He pointed his wand at Neville and said in a high, cold voice, "Scream for your friend Neville. Let him hear your pitiful whelps as he knows there is nothing he can do to save you." And scream Neville did, as the Cruciatus curse ripped through him. _

Harry woke up sweating on the floor next to his bed. He pushed his glasses on and he and a bleary eyed Ron, who had been woken up by Harry's fall, ran all the way to Dumbledore's office. But not before Harry had pulled open the Marauder's map and confirmed that Neville's dot was nowhere in the school grounds. He was amazed he hadn't thought about it before.

They paused, panting, in front of the gargoyle that guarded Dumbledore's office. Harry racked his brains for the password and blurted out "Firewhisky."

The gargoyle quirked an eyebrow at him, looking like he wanted to make a snarky comment about their disheveled appearance but he merely shifted aside and Harry ran up the spiraling stairs followed by a confused Ron who had not yet been clued in about the dream.

He pounded on Dumbledore's door, but there was no reply and the unlocking charm didn't work. He unfolded the map and stared at it confused. Only minutes ago, Dumbledore's dot had been in this office and yet, now it was gone. How had Dumbledore left so quickly and why?

Back in the common room, Ron converged on Harry. "What the hell are you doing? What did you see?"

"Neville. Being tortured by Voldemort in a dungeon. He's in trouble, I knew it! We have to do something!"

Ron turned pale. "W-what about telling Mcgonagall?"

"No, she'll just tell us to inform Dumbledore and he's not here right now. We can't wait Ron. Neville is being tortured _right now_!"

"_WHAT?"_ Ron and Harry turned to find a bushy haired Hermione striding towards them. There were a couple of curious faces peeking from the rooms on the landing.

Ron brought her upto date while Harry fidgeted impatiently, waiting for him to finish.

"We have to go to the ministry."

"The ministry? Are you _insane?_ Just how do you propose we do that? We're a bunch of underage wizards Harry. They're not going to be too understanding if we use magic you know." Hermione said scathingly.

"Well, _what else_?" Harry exploded. "Look I'm going and you can't stop me. If you want to join me then fine and if not, then goodbye."

Hermione bit her lip. That didn't leave them much choice. Or any choice at all, for that matter. "I'll go get dressed."

Ten minutes later they were assembled in the common room again, wands ready. They left the common room as discreetly as possible, and were walking past the Charms room concealed under Harry's invisibility cloak when they saw Luna up ahead.

"Blimey. What is she upto?" Ron whispered.

"Dunno."

Luna turned suddenly, and blinked in their direction.

"Harry? Ron? Hermione?"

Harry pulled off the cloak. "How'd you know?"

Luna smiled. "Who else owns an invisibility cloak and sneaks about at odd hours of the night? I'm not in Ravenclaw for nothing you know."

Ron wanted to ask what _she_ was doing sneaking around at odd hours of the night but thought better of it.

"Look Luna, we've got to run okay?"

"Are you going to save Neville? I'm coming too." She said eagerly.

The three of them stared, dumbfounded, at her.

Another ten minutes later, they were standing at the edge of the forbidden forest. Luna whistled once and two large thestrals landed lightly in front of them.

"Let's go." She said, surprisingly energetic considering it was 2 am.

"Wait!" Hermione said. She pointed at each of them in turn with her wand and whispered a string of complex words under her breath.

"What..?"

"Concealment charm. There's no way to get rid of the trace but if we use magic outside of Hogwarts now, the ministry won't be able to tell exactly where we are even though they'll know when we're using spells. Plus that way, with some luck, they won't know its us."

"Hermione, you're a genius." Ron said, awestruck.

Wasting no more time, they clambered on, two to a thestral.

_Hold on Neville, we're coming_ was Harry's last thought as the Thestrals spread their wings and swept into the air.

A/N: Don't forget to review! It means a lot


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